Dam-Funk Brings the G-Funk Era to Shanghai

Funk fans are in for a treat this Saturday, as the arty US hip hop label Stones Throw and Shanghai promoters Sub-Culture present artist Dam-Funk’s (sounds like dame) Shanghai installment of his Asian Funk Tsunami tour. The show will be held in the nether regions known as the Shelter, where Satan and I like to party. (Hey, Shelter: “True Blood” just called and they want their club back.)

Ironically, I was just checking out a mix of funkdafied gospel spirituals done by Dam-Funk on the Stones Throw podcast so it is apparent that the the forces of good and evil will wage war this Saturday night, maybe even spilling over into Sunday morning. This guy has an amazing knowledge of late ’80s, early ’90s funk and he will be putting it on display for you

Dam’s stated goal is to “get the genre of funk respect again,” and, “continue where funk left off before the hip hop era.” I think he is travelling well on that path, as evidenced by the stuff from his new album, “Toeachizown”. It’s full of smoothed-out funk bubbles that pop with synths, vocoders, and other spacey textures. You know when you look at a balloon closely and you see a rainbow? These are the colors that Dam-Funk evokes. It’s like he has exhumed and re-animated Roger & Zapp, using body parts from Parliament, Slave, Prince, and Dr. Dre. He has also aligned himself with the indie world, making a remix of “Summertime Clothes” for Internet darling Animal Collective.

Dam-Funk has been sending updates of his exploits over in Japan, which precede his Shanghai appearance. It sounds like they have been quite receptive over there and one of the things that excited me most was a couple of pictures of Dam-Funk sporting a keytar! If you don’t know what this amazing contraption is, you must bring yourself to the Shelter on Saturday night. Just do it. Don’t ask questions when keytars are involved. 50 kuai gain you entry to a night of some much-needed funk and love. And maybe a vampire or two. You never know what will happen in the Shelter.